DARRELL NORMAN: Father had a way with words

Saturday

Jun 18, 2011 at 12:01 AMJun 18, 2011 at 11:31 PM

When the gas pump would not accept my debit card and told me to “See Attendant,” I met the attendant coming out of his booth. He gestured for me to give him the card so he could show me how to use it, but I jammed it back in myself and the pump came on.

By Darrell NormanTimes Columnist

When the gas pump would not accept my debit card and told me to “See Attendant,” I met the attendant coming out of his booth. He gestured for me to give him the card so he could show me how to use it, but I jammed it back in myself and the pump came on.The attendant’s reaction was, “Must notta been holding your mouth right, as my momma said.” The words made a sweet sound as they bounced off my memory. It was not my mother who always used them (although I’m sure she did sometimes). It was my father.As my bride and I were leaving the Olive Garden in Birmingham later the same day, I heard a woman’s voice behind us. “Thank you, ladies. Come back.” I laughed it off without turning around. After all, I was wearing a loose Tolstoy shirt and a safari vest. My white hair hung down well past my collar and was about the same length as the bride’s.People have made that mistake before. Her father used to say he couldn’t tell us apart from behind when we had matching long hair and wore matching and roomy Liberty overalls that had been handed down by my father. Actually by my mother. When the old man’s overalls faded, he would have kept wearing them, but she made him get rid of them and buy new blue ones.Then the next day I was about to enter the men’s room at Cracker Barrel when I heard a women’s voice from behind me. “Ma’am, that’s the men’s room! Ma’am!” The helpful lady’s voice cut off as I turned just enough that she could see my beard, white and long like my hair.When I told my daughter about it over lunch, she didn’t believe me at first. After I assured that it had happened just that way, a repeat of the day before, she said, “That’s a sign that it’s time for you to go see Peachie.” Peachie is the hair dresser who trims me up a bit every four or five months or whenever the women in my life can bully me into her shop.As you know, memories of my father often show up in this space, and the long hair incidents brought him to my mind, as did “must notta been holding your mouth right.” Daddy liked to play with language and had dozens of such sayings. I wish I had written more of them down. Many of them were scatological, racist, sexist or otherwise socially improper analogies: “It’s rainin’ like a …”; I’m sweatin’ like a ...”; “she’s got legs like a …”; “it’s as cold as …” His sayings were never mean or hateful, but each one had a little barb of wit that stuck and stayed with you.I’m sure he had unflattering ways to refer to my long hair and beard, which he never liked. He would not have called me a woman, but he would have come up with some catchy way to express his displeasure, especially among his ball-cap buddies down at the parts store. He also disparaged the tire-sole, harness-leather sandals that I bought for $5 at the Roseville Auction when we all visited my brother in Sacramento. But they were still welcome under his table.After a while, he accepted that it all came as part of the package: the long hair, the beard, the tire-tread sandals. He eventually saw that I was no longer the dark-haired, clean-faced teenager he remembered, but an independent middle-aged man, just as stubborn as he was.I last saw my father alive on the Father’s Day after his 80th birthday. As a gift, I had mowed his grass and put up a new hummingbird feeder before coming to the hospital. He liked that. As I pushed him around in a wheelchair, he surveyed the layout of the place where he had spent two or three weeks. We talked about getting him a “go-devil” to get around when he got home. But then we stopped to look out the window. In words I can still hear, he said, “I’ve got too much agin me this time, son.” And it was too much. He died three days later.If he could see me now, he’d probably say, “Get a damn haircut. You look like a …”The words, how they linger.

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